Where Aren’t They Now? 11 Overlooked Deaths of 2011

Sure, when you're an Amy Winehouse, a Steve Jobs or an Osama bin Laden, the world is going to grind to a halt and have a tweetgasm at the news of your passing. But when you're a "guy who played that one kid on Barney Miller," good luck getting anyone to notice that you kicked the bucket.

So each year Cracked takes time to remember the slightly less famous people who maybe didn't revolutionize the PC and music industries, but who still left an interesting little mark on the culture. These are the most overlooked deaths of 2011.

#11. Feb. 4 -- One Fast Pussycat

After reading Tura Satana's biography, we got the sneaking suspicion that Quentin Tarantino read it, too ... and based every single one of his movies off it. Assuming Satana's version of her life is true, and who are we to say it's not, someone has really missed the boat in not turning her story into a gritty graphic novel.

Here's the quick version: When Tura Satana, daughter of a Japanese/Filipino silent movie actor dad and Cheyenne/Scots-Irish circus performer mom, was a kid, she developed early boob-wise. Way early. And she was teased, harassed and eventually assaulted because of her body. Which was why she learned aikido and karate and tracked down each of her assailants to exact her beautiful revenge. We told you she was a Tarantino movie come to life.

After a turn as a child bride, then the leader of a girl gang, Satana took up exotic dancing and nudie posing. She eventually landed in the uber-violent Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill! and the wet dreams of bad boys everywhere. And as if her martial arts training, humongous chest and titular role in one of the most exploitative movies of the '60s wasn't enough to cement a spectacular life, Satana said she not only dated Elvis Presley, but turned down his marriage proposal. And she went on to become a nurse and a police dispatcher later, but only after getting shot by an ex-lover.

#10. March 19 -- Knut the Polar Bear

Drowning? No one is exactly sure. The way of the polar bear is mysterious.

The Legacy:

Knut (rhymes with "ka-kute") was a world-famous polar bear, raised in captivity at the Berlin Zoo. The Germans went "knuts" for Knut, in that special, fanatical way that only Germans can. Part of Knut's appeal was his story -- his mother rejected him, his caretaker fawned over him like a mother hen/crazy person and, good lord, just look at the little thing:

It was no wonder Knut spawned a mass media phenomenon known as "Knutmania" -- toys, books, DVDs, the whole shebang. He was even solely responsible for a 5 million Euro increase in the zoo's profits. Hey, you know what they say about German zoos, don't you? That they're not in the Arctic Circle. Not even close. Which is one reason why animal activists were not happy with Knut's captivity. He was constantly surrounded by people (over 600 watched him have a seizure before he fell into the pool and died), and he was enclosed with not one, not two, but three aggressive lady bears who chased, bit and bullied him for fun.

Getty"I AM AN EAT-BEAR! RAWR!"

And since Knut died about 20 years earlier than most polar bears, the activists are probably right for once. Here's something they're also right about: Having Knut stuffed and mounted for display at the Berlin Museum is just about as humiliating as ending your life as bully fodder for lady polar bears.

No? He said he was. Buster Martin said a lot of things. Like that he got his nickname "Buster" from hitting a priest on the nose at age 3, and that he fought off a gang of muggers at age 100, and that he was the oldest British man to ever complete a marathon. And in case you're doing a little background research for a thesis or something, none of those claims could be independently verified. Not even the stuff about his age or his marital status or the existence of his supposed 17 children, let alone whether he really fought off muggers or just fell down drunk and wanted some attention.

But that's why we loved him. For all we know, Buster didn't die at all. He just lied his way into Buckingham Palace and is posing as a shaggy Prince Philip as we speak.

GettyGah! No, stop, we take it back!

#8. April 20 -- The Inventor of Passionless Acting

The next time a newscaster seems to be staring right at you with her cold, dead eyes flicking subtly from left to right, thank Hubert Schlafly, because he co-invented what she's reading off of. The device was originally called the TelePrompTer. ("The second T was capitalized for TERRIFIC!")

In the late 1940s, a Broadway actor, Fred Barton, complained that he couldn't remember his lines. Schlafly was working as director of television research at Fox, and the task to "fix Barton's stupidity'' fell on him. The first teleprompter looked like something out of The Flintstones: Schlafly installed a motorized scroll of paper inside half a suitcase. Actors' lines were printed on the paper in half-inch letters, and the suitcase was set up next to studio cameras. The scrolling speed was controlled manually by a stagehand.

And when you think about it, the hilariously named Schlafly probably had the biggest influence out of anyone else on this list. Because his invention came even before television was a household thing, so everyone who came after benefited from it; talk show hosts, soap opera actors, Saturday Night Live times infinity. Politics would look completely different without it. So ... uh ... thanks?

#7. May 3 -- Superman's Boss

In 1931, 9-year-old Jackie Cooper became the youngest person ever nominated for an Academy Award. No one was all that impressed, since the Academy Awards were only a few days old and other 9-year-olds were hopping trains and sharecropping cotton to feed their families, but then Cooper went and held the record for almost 50 years. It took that shaggy-headed kid from Kramer vs. Kramer to break the Cooper record, and even that kid only went on to claim the part of Molly Ringwald's fat little brother in Sixteen Candles, so we're thinking that nomination was a fluke. Couple Cooper's early success with the fact that he got to boss the best version of Superman around as Perry White of the Daily Planet and you've got yourself a bona fide American hero.

Getty"You have three seconds to remove your hand before everyone starts calling you 'Lefty'."

Now, here's a fun story about Cooper. His autobiography was called Please Don't Shoot My Dog, not because he wanted to keep his dog off camera, but because that Oscar-nominated performance was rendered after his director/uncle threatened to SHOOT HIS REAL LIFE DOG if he didn't cry on camera. And that, kids, is how you get an Academy Award nomination.

#6. June 6 -- Outlaw Sheep

Via Omgheart.comDon't pretend you don't want to squeeze that 'til it baahs.

As any shepherd can tell you, one of the perils of owning sheep is crippling loneliness and presumed sexual frustration. Another is shearing them every year, not just for their precious, beautiful wool, but for their own comfort. It's not like they can stop in at the barbershop themselves, no matter what you've heard otherwise, and wool is heavy and carries filth.

So shearing sheep is a necessity of life. But like some kind of weird scissor-phobic wool hippie, Shrek the New Zealand sheep wasn't playing by no sheep shearer's rules, man. When shearing time came around, he hid in caves, every year, for six years. When the wool cutter finally caught up with him, this was what he looked like:

Via Omgheart.comIf "fluff" could make a sound, Shrek would be deafening.

Can you even?

Sixty pounds of wool. That's how much weight the poor thing was carrying around before he was found in 2004. It's like carrying around a child for warmth, all the time.

So that was how Shrek got famous, but not how he died. He died when his vet recommended the 16-year-old firebrand be put down, the sheep who successfully fought the system for longer than most of us will ever manage.